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WSM: What effect have recent advances in neuroscience had
on your work?
ED: Well everyone with an interest in human behavior has
to be aware of neuroscience now, because there’s so much
interesting research coming out. It’s obvious that our brain is
behind everything we do. When you talk or even move a finger,
that’s your brain signaling it to do so. It’s also responsible, or
has its part, in what we think and why we do things—motivation,
emotions. In my wish to understand why art exists, why people do
it, I have to take neuroscience into consideration.
Of course neuroscience is a difficult subject—not easy for a
humanist to master. I do the best I can.
I don’t know how much you know about my recent theories on baby
talk and mother-infant interaction.
WSM: Art and Intimacy is the one book I have not
read.
ED: Please bear with me, because I have to describe
several pieces of the puzzle that all need to be in place in
order to support my idea that the precursors to the sorts of
abilities and sensitivities that became art originated in
mother-infant interactions.
Two million years ago on the African savannah, there were two
conflicting evolutionary trends in ancestral humans. First, our
species was bipedal—we walked on two legs. That necessitated a
number of physiological and anatomical changes—in back and neck, in
legs and feet and hips, and in the shape of the pelvis. At
the same time, brain size and of course the skull were enlarging.
So at the time of childbirth, this presented a problem, sometimes
called "the obstetric dilemma," with narrower pelvises and bigger
babies’ heads.
Other adaptations were required so that childbirth would not be
impossible. The baby’s skull became somewhat compressible—you know,
the "soft spot." And a lot of brain growth takes place outside the
mother’s body. Between birth and age four, the brain triples in
size. The female pelvis is able to separate slightly at birth. And
importantly, the gestation period has shrunk. It has been projected
that if human babies were as mature at birth as baby chimps, humans
would have an18-month gestation period and babies would weigh 25
pounds at birth.
The result, over hundreds of thousands of generations, is a very
helpless baby that needs a lot of care for a long time. All
primates are good mothers, and human mothers would also have been
"programmed" to take care of their babies. But for several years?
Especially for this completely helpless and demanding infant that
can’t cling and needs constant attention.
So I have suggested that mother-infant interaction—the universal
behavior that we call "baby talk" and perform without even
realizing it—became a behavioral adaptation that emotionally bonded
human mothers and infants.
When adults talk to babies, we look into their eyes, which is a
very unusual thing. Animals usually don’t look into each
other’s eyes, unless they’re aggressive, or in humans if they’re
very intimate, during lovemaking. That’s the only time. Or with
little babies.
We make these strange faces, you open your eyes really wide and
smile or open your mouth and nod. Or you bob your head quickly
back. You lean your body forward. You pat and hold, touch and kiss.
In a soft, undulant, high-pitched voice you say, "Hiiiii!", "Ooh,
look at you! Are you hungry? Are you?"
All of these actions are drawn from what are called affinitive,
or affiliative, behavior. Open mouth, smiles, widened eyes, an
eyebrow flash—they’re all expressions that we naturally use with
each other, without even thinking about it, that indicate that
we’re we’re friendly or well-disposed to someone. In a classroom,
when somebody you know enters the room you’ll briefly raise your
eyebrows, to acknowledge you’ve seen them, or bob your head back
like that. You nod when you’re in synch with somebody, talking to
them. In sympathy, we pat, touch, we make out voice soft and
undulant. You don’t talk in a deep voice or with long explanatory
sentences to a baby.
So I have suggested that baby talk is a "ritualized behavior"
that evolved in order to reinforce mothers' love for their babies.
Neuroscientific studies show that when we laugh or even make happy
expressions, we feel good. Or if we frown and think bad thoughts,
we feel depressed. My reasoning is that an ancestral mother who
interacted with her baby using exaggerations of affiliative signals
reinforced the neural circuits for affiliation in her own
brain. Actually, it's a two-way adaptation: Babies who made
their mothers act in that sort of way, who elicited these
bahaviors, were better taken care of, and mothers who acted in that
sort of way felt more like taking care of their babies. Of course
this behavior evolved and refined itself over many, many
generations.
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